Lately, I've been reliving my youth of writing 6502 assembly language, inspired in part by one of Ben Eater's videos[1], and with the aid of Easy 6502[2].
I think that programming in assembly language is compelling because it is "rightsized" for the human brain. You spend a lot of time solving small, manageable puzzles about the best way to do achieve small victories like trying to squeeze every last cycle or byte out of some small section of code. And then you sit back and laugh because after all that struggle you managed to compute something that would take an insignificant amount of effort to do in a high level language. But it works on this very limited device, and that's a thrill.
I think that programming in assembly language is compelling because it is "rightsized" for the human brain. You spend a lot of time solving small, manageable puzzles about the best way to do achieve small victories like trying to squeeze every last cycle or byte out of some small section of code. And then you sit back and laugh because after all that struggle you managed to compute something that would take an insignificant amount of effort to do in a high level language. But it works on this very limited device, and that's a thrill.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl8vPW5hydQ [2] http://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/